he
pressure. The shadows of forward-surging men wavered far out across
the track. A smother of ondriving dust broke, hurricane-like, around
the last turn, sweeping before it into the straightaway a struggling
mass of horse-flesh and a confusion of stable-colors. Back to the
right, the grandstand came to its feet, bellowing in a madman's
chorus.

Out of the forefront of the struggle strained a blood-bay colt. The
boy, crouched over the shoulders, was riding with hand and heel to the
last ounce of his strength and the last subtle feather-weight of his
craft and skill. At his saddleskirts pressed a pair of distended
nostrils and a black, foam-flecked muzzle. Behind, with a gap of track
and daylight between, trailed the laboring "ruck."

A tall stranger, who had lost his companion and host in the maelstrom
of the betting shed, had taken his stand near the angle where the
paddock grating meets the track fence. A Derby crowd at Churchill
Downs is a congestion of humanity, and in the obvious impossibility of
finding his friend he could here at least give his friend the
opportunity of finding him, since at this point were a few panels of
fence almost clear. As the two colts fought out the final decisive
furlongs, the black nose stealing inch by inch along the bay neck, the
stranger's face wore an interest not altogether that of the casual
race-goer. His shoulders were thrown back, and his rather lean jaw
angle swept into an uncompromising firmness of chin--just now
uptilted.

The man stood something like six feet of clear-cut physical fitness.
There was a declaration in his breadth of shoulder and depth of chest,
in his slenderness of waist and thigh, of a life spent only partly
within walls, while the free swing of torso might have intimated to
the expert observer that some of it had been spent in the saddle.

Of the face itself, the eyes were the commanding features. They were
gray eyes, set under level brows; keenly observant by token of their
clear light, yet tinged by a half-wistful softness that dwells
hauntingly in the eyes of dreamers.

Just now, the eyes saw not only the determination of a four-furlong
dash for two-year-olds, but also, across the fresh turf of the
infield, the radiant magic of May, under skies washed brilliant by
April's rains.

Then, as the colts came abreast and passed in a muffled roar of
drumming hoofs, his eyes suddenly abandoned the race at the exact
moment of its climax: as hundreds of